Addicted sock knitters are a quirky bunch: we love knitting all kinds of socks in all kinds of settings and situations and we so we all have some of the same issues, trials and tribulations. One of the most perennial issues we face is the never ending accumulation of scraps of fingering wool; hence my original motivation for this sock design. This is certainly not the first scrappy sock I have knit, or even designed a pattern for, and it will assuredly not be the last. In this simple repetitive design I wanted to highlight the visual drama of triangles that I originally fell in love with in my quilting phase.

Another motivation for this sock was my boredom with my standard heel flap and gussets. I have been blessed with big feet, sturdy (!) ankles and a ridiculously high instep and many of the alternate heels available in the Knitting Universe just don’t accommodate those features like the good old heel flap. So I decided to play around with an alternate design after some inspiration from the internet that could still handle a decent ankle circumference. I had occasionally seen some triangular heels here and there and been intrigued; here is my version that I call a Wedge Heel. After a fair amount of test knitting, working out stitch counts, placement and design of the colorwork I’m pretty happy with these heels. They do indeed contribute a roomy ankle AND as an added plus: there are no heel flap stitches to pick up!

These socks are knit top down using various scrap fingering yarns in light and dark solid colors. Choosing yarns that are highly variegated or not strongly contrasting will obscure the triangle pattern. While these sock would also be striking worked in just 2 colors, lots of crazy colors really catches the eye. The heel is worked integrally and thus cannot be worked in a separate color. As always when working a colorwork pattern that contains floats, care must be taken to expand stitches as you knit so that the resulting sock is not too snug to pull on. Rest assured, though; these babies as shown were knit up in the XL size for my size 11 clodhoppers and they fit great! I knit socks on 4 DPNs at a time, I have attempted to generalize my instructions for folks who use other needle set-ups.

Materials:
Scrap yarn in dark and light solid shades in fingering weight ~ 100 g in total
Needles in size US 1 and 2 OR sizes needed to obtain the gauge
Stitch markers
Tapestry needle

Gauge:
33 ST and 40 rows = 4 inches in stockinette ST using US 2 over blocked stockinette worked over the colorwork pattern OR size needed to obtain the gauge